Remember the Rainbow

The month of June to a great deal of the population it is awaited with happy anticipation and not because it signal summer is finally here. This month has been deemed Pride Month a time of rainbow flags, coming out and celebrating the identity and community of being  LGBTQ. However in a time of wide spread openness and public celebration it is easy to forget that the rights of this community is still very much under attack.In most countries in Europe and the Western Hemisphere it is being quickly forgotten that for one the queer community has just recently been accepted and secondly they still faces major challenges.

 Starting on June 28th, 1969 police brutality and injustice towards the gay and lesbian community was met with protest.In the Stonewall riots Queer people marched in the streets continuing even when some of them were beaten and arrested. This massive protest and the ones that followed lead way to organizations like the Gay Liberation Front and was a huge turning point for the fight for gay rights. In more recent history the Lesbian, Bisexual and gay community won a major goal, gay marriage was legalized in the United States in June of 2015. This was a massive win for the LGBTQ community but the war is far from over.

In 2016 alone twenty two trans people have been murdered and in 2017 so far fifteen more names can be added to the list. In the populous around 2.7% have been incarcerated in the trans community that number is 16%. Not only this but LGBTQ youth face a higher rate of abuse, poverty, homelessness and rape. Twenty percent of LGBT people have an annual income of less than $12,000 a year. And these statistics stem from only the United States.

On a global scale things are far more grim, seventy five countries still consider homosexuality as a criminal offense and in many it can be punished by death. In a great deal of the middle east gay and trans people are executed . And in Chechnya a genocide against gay men is being carried out as more than a hundred gay men have been rounded up and slaughtered.

It is because of these injustices that it is necessary for the LGBTQ community to continue to hold their ground and fight for not only their rights but the rights of others n their community on a global scale because although it's been a long time since Stonewall but we have a long way to go.